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Tuesday, April 11, 2017

AUTHOR MEREDITH BOND TACKLES BAD BOSSES AND BASIPHOBIA (FEAR OF FALLING)

Meredith Bond's books straddle that beautiful line between historical romance and fantasy. An award-winning author, she writes traditional Regency romances, medieval Arthurian romances, and Regency romances with a touch of magic. Learn more about Meredith and her books at her website. 

You think your boss is bad?

All my life I have wanted nothing more than to serve The People. Politics has been my passion—from the time I ran for class president in elementary school right on through to when I was president of the student government at my university. Getting a permanent job on the Hill was a dream come true.

I’d worked for Congressman Tom Whitmeyer from the time I was in high school. I began as an unpaid intern and then continued straight through college. When he offered me a full-time, permanent job after I graduated, I was thrilled. The man was my teacher, my mentor. I admired everything about him from his politics to his lovely wife, who I met when they came over to my parents’ house one Labor Day for a barbecue.

I honestly thought I had the greatest mentor and a dream job that would take me exactly where I wanted to go in life.

Boy, was I wrong!

People, don’t get fooled. Don’t get lulled into believing that your boss admires and respects you as much as you do him or her. Don’t fall into the trap I fell into. You are nothing to your boss but a means to an end. A boss will use you for all you’re worth.

I found this out on the day I was betrayed.

I should have gotten out right then and there. I should have said no, but he had me and he knew it.

Just as I have always wanted to be in politics, I have always been afraid of falling. High places aren’t really a problem—I can fly in a plane and even look out a small window from the top of a skyscraper. No, I’m afraid of large windows. Windows that open. Balconies. Anywhere there is the slightest possibility of falling.

On one beautiful spring day, at the height of cherry blossom season in DC, my boss walked me into an 18th-floor apartment that had one wall that was all windows. It was mine, he said. Yes, he was offering me this amazing apartment to rent and even offered to pay half!

To anyone else this would have been a dream come true. But there were two small catches:

1) I couldn’t even walk into the place without being terrified of falling out of those windows (or over the balcony just outside of them).

2) It wasn’t just going to be my apartment. It was also going to be his pied-a-terre!

Yes, the one catch that he brushed off as if it was nothing was the fact that I would have to get out at a moment’s notice for the night while he used the place to meet his mistress.

Everything I’d ever thought of my boss—wonderful man, strong upstanding servant of The People, yadda, yadda, yadda—was gone. Flown right out of those enormous windows, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I told him I couldn’t do it.

He threatened to destroy my career in politics forever if I didn’t.

I did it.

What else could I do?

The story does have a happy ending, but it has nothing to do with my boss.

It was only his insistence that I take this apartment that led to me meeting David—a lawyer with the public defender’s office and hypnotist for fun (and the man with whom I will be spending the rest of my very happy life, although getting to that point wasn’t exactly easy or painless, I can assure you!).

It was only because of my boss’s insistence that I allowed myself to be hypnotized and learned that I’d lived another lifeand that David had been a part of it.

So, while my story has a good outcome, I warn you not to count on that.

Admire your boss. Respect him or her. But be wary and be sure to protect yourself. Be ready to run—or quit—at the first unreasonable demand. And most of all—be strong!

I wasn’t, and I nearly paid the ultimate price for my weakness.

Falling 
In another time…
Boundless blue skies. Oblivion. The pull of the sky through the wall of windows in Erin Freyn’s new apartment is as enticing as it is disturbing. It seems to call her to step out, to let go, to surrender herself into its terrifying embrace. But when she turns to a hypnotist for help, she never dreams it will uncover long-hidden secrets – of ageless magic and forbidden romance.

In another place…
David Elder is trying to live up to the memory of his brother, who died while working with inner-city kids.   He couldn’t save his brother, but perhaps with his magic he can save others. When he hypnotizes Erin to seek a cure for her fears, they discover instead an ancient connection. In a past life, he was a medieval knight and her illicit lover… before things went very wrong.

Today…
Fate has given them a second chance. Will they take it and finally find happiness, or will they be doomed to replay history yet again?

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